Facebook promised to open a data centre in Canada to create jobs, in exchange for the federal government offering assurances that it would not impose its jurisdiction over the company’s non-Canadian data.
Documents show that Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg was negotiating this deal with the previous Conservative government, namely then-industry minister Christian Paradis.
The documents were leaked to journalists in the United Kingom. CBC News has not independently verified the contents.
They show a global lobbying operation carried out by Facebook targeting legislators around the world, including in countries like the U.K., United States, Canada, India and Brazil.
In Canada’s case, they threatened to withhold investment and job creation opportunities unless Canada adopted data policies that favoured Facebook.
The memos leaked to the journalists detail what went on during lobbying efforts in Canada.
The memos leaked to the journalists detail what went on during lobbying efforts in Canada allegedly involving Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and then-industry minister Christian Paradis. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)
“Sheryl took a firm approach and outlined that a decision on the datacentre was imminent. She emphasised that if we could not get comfort from the Canadian government on the jurisdiction issue we had other options,” Marne Levine, Facebook’s former vice-president of global public policy wrote in one memo, first reported by Computer Weekly and the Guardian, who have seen the documents.
After this pressure, Paradis allegedly agreed to give Facebook a letter guaranteeing the independence of non-Canadian data by the end of that day.
The documents also show Levine complaining to her colleagues about an unnamed minister’s aide, and explaining how Facebook officials made their way to a government reception to “cut the awful staff person out of the way” and give Levine direct access to Paradis. The dates in question are unknown, but Paradis was a minister from 2007 to 2015.
Facebook, Paradis and the current government’s Democratic Institutions Minister Karina Gould did not immediately respond to CBC News’s requests for comment.
‘A real eye-opener’
The lobbyist registry shows no meetings formally reported between Facebook and federal cabinet ministers during the time Paradis was in the role.
“It’s a real insight, a real eye-opener into how they operate,” Carole Cadwalladr, one of the authors of the Guardian article, told CBC News on Sunday.
She says they don’t know who leaked the documents, but they appear to have originated from a release under legal discovery rules from an ongoing U.S. court case against Facebook.
After the letter was promised to Facebook by the Canadian government, Cadwalladr said the documents show Facebook was still debating whether to put the data centre in Canada or Iowa.
Facebook has come under fire for its privacy and data policies, especially after it was revealed last year that Cambridge Analytica had harvested the data of millions of users without their consent for political purposes.